


such simple words (such a complicated truth)

by thimbleful



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, Canon Universe, F/M, First Time Together, Fluff, Happy Ending, Idk what to tag this as, Post S7, Romance, Wedding Night, i mean just a bit you know what i'm about, it's not angsty angst, oh right!, post parentage reveal, there we go, there's fluff too so, they get married and then they bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 14:30:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17624165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimbleful/pseuds/thimbleful
Summary: "You don’t have the right name to make men rally behind you, you don’t have any armies nor land or a castle or--”“No, but I do.” Sansa drops her necklace and Jon shifts in his seat to get away from the twisting sensation in his stomach. He knows where this is going: his depraved dreams come true under the worst possible circumstances.Jon and Sansa get married and consummate that marriage. That's it. That's the fic.





	such simple words (such a complicated truth)

**Author's Note:**

> While this technically is explicit, it’s not intense Hot Smut. I mean, it has smut--don't get me wrong--but it's mostly about two people trying to navigate a difficult situation while communicating a lot (not always communicating _well_ , but that’s a different matter. At least they’re trying lol). I know that's not everyone's cuppa, hence the warning.
> 
> tw: brief mentions of past abuse.

Jon stares at his hands. They’re resting palm up on his thighs, fingers curled. He has callouses from sword fighting, scars from the burn of a lantern, and dirt underneath his fingernails. No matter how many times he washes dirt always manages to find its way back underneath his fingernails. If Lyanna had lived, would she have tutted at him and told him princes should-- Oh, what does it matter? She died giving birth to him and he’ll never know how she would’ve raised him. She died and all his life he’s been a burden to the people forced to protect him. To his father--his _uncle_ \--and to lady Stark and to his siblings. _Cousins_. Even now--especially now, when this secret is more dangerous than ever.

He scrubs his hands over his face and tunes back into the conversation. His little sister’s speaking fervently about protecting him because when Daenerys finds out, she’s going to kill him.

“No. She’ll want to marry him.” Sansa turns the needle of her necklace in her hands and he looks at that instead of her face--a face he’s now allowed to admire openly. (It only makes him more aware he shouldn’t.) “Only if he rejects her should we expect war.”

Jon sighs. “Then I won’t reject her.”

“Are you mad?” Arya frowns. “We’re not letting you marry that woman.” Her hand closes around the hilt of Needle. “If it’s war she wants, it’s war we’ll give her.”

“But Jon is no longer Ned Stark’s bastard.” Bran’s brown eyes lack expression when they land on him. “You’re a Targaryen prince who gave away their kingdom to your invading aunt.”

“I did what I had to for us all to survive.”

“And we all know that,” Davos says, “but the bannermen won’t necessarily be as understanding. You don’t have the right name to make men rally behind you, you don’t have any armies nor land or a castle or--”

“No, but I do.” Sansa drops her necklace and Jon shifts in his seat to get away from the twisting sensation in his stomach. He knows where this is going: his depraved dreams come true under the worst possible circumstances. “My bannermen are loyal to me. As are the Knights of the Vale. I’ve been in contact with my uncle Edmure. I’m positive they’d side with us. The wildlings don’t follow me, that’s true, but they would follow Jon.”

“It’s not their fight.”

“Isn’t it? They don’t kneel. What do you think she’ll do to them when she realizes they didn’t come with the kingdom you gave her?” Sansa positions herself before him, tall and regal, the only things revealing her nerves her tightly clasped hands and the marble mask of her beautiful face. “Together we’d be strong. No one who’s loyal to me would dare touching my husband. And if you’re already married, she can’t force you to marry her.”

When he was north of the Wall, far away from settlements, from babbling brooks, from bleating livestock, from children playing and brothers sparring and blacksmiths beating steel, colors muted into black and white and gray, and sounds muted into snow creaking under boots and the wind brushing over snowbanks. He never thought he’d hear silence like that again; he was wrong. No one in the room is even breathing. All he hears is the beat of his own stupid heart.

Jon rubs the tension aching between his eyebrows, shields his face with his hand to get away from the attention aimed at him by people waiting for his reaction.

Finally, Davos breaks the stifling silence. “Daenerys can’t have children, you said, but a ruler must have an heir.”

“Ser Davos is right,” Sansa says. “If I carried your child, it would strengthen your claim. You’d be a better choice, someone other houses would support over her.”

“My child,” Jon says with a hollow laugh. Beads of sweat cling to his forehead and he wipes it off with his sleeve. “Everyone out. I need a word with my… with Sansa.”

Elbows resting on his thighs, Jon goes back to staring at his lax hands until the room is empty. Sansa remains in her spot, a blur of gray and copper that solidifies into the woman he loves when he lifts his gaze and focuses it on her. She doesn’t know, can never know--what would she think of him? She never would suggest this if she knew. Would she?

Jon emits a harsh breath and stands. “I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”

“You’ve suffered through two unwanted marriages already. I refuse to be the reason for a third.”

“You’re nothing like them. I wouldn’t suffer.”

“Sansa…”

“I know I’m not whom you’d choose and if…” The resolution she’s cloaked herself with slips and she licks her lips, gaze flitting about the room as she searches for words, and he knows he should protest, knows he should tell her how wrong she is, that she’s the only person in the world whom he’d choose to marry, but the words are lodged in his throat and his lips are pressed thin and his whole body is frozen like the Wall. “If you doubt you could go through with this,” she says, “then we’ll find another way. But if you’re protesting because you want to protect me…” She takes a step closer, finds his hand. Hers is cold and pale, fingers thin and soft. His own fingers close around hers instinctively. “Mother often told me love didn’t just happen to her and Father. They built it stone by stone. And they were happy. I believe we could be too.”

“You really believe that? Stone by stone.”

“I do. We’ve already laid the foundation, haven’t we? We’re not strangers. We have trust, affection, we enjoy each other’s company. It’s more than most have.”

“You know what this means. What we’ll have to do.”

She lays her other hand over his, strokes her thumb over his skin. “I’ve been through worse.”

Her wry smile does little to convince him.

“Sansa…”

She releases a shuddering breath and holds his hand tighter, eyes earnest and far too blue. “I love you, Jon.”

For half a heartbeat he thinks she means it the way he feels it, for half a heartbeat his own heart stutters, but that earnestness is the same as when she told him she loved Father and Robb, when she implied she loved him too in just the same way, and Jon’s heart resumes its regular rhythm. A thud-thud-thud that echoes in a silence that ought to be filled by, “ _I love you too_.” But how can he say those words when he means them in a whole different way?

How can he say them when she is his bliss and his shame and his secret treasure and whatever else that stupid song Arya kept singing at the welcoming feast said? A stupid song that has plagued him daily ever since.

Sansa releases his hands with a sad smile. “I want to protect you, and as your wife I can. Take a few hours to think it over. It’s a difficult decision to make. But if you say no, say no for your own sake. Not for mine. I know what this means and I’m still offering.”

With those words she leaves him and the rest of the afternoon he wanders through a fog of fragmented dreams and wishes. He sees her smiling at him in the godswood, feels her lips as they kiss, hears her laughing when he throws her over his shoulder and darts off before the guests have had a chance to clamor for a bedding ceremony. Then it all fades and he’s left with the cold hard facts: with a single word he could get what he’s always wanted in the way he’d never want it.

He walks to her chamber determined to say no, but when she opens the door with a shy smile on her face, his mouth says yes.

 

* * *

 

 

They marry that same night in a dark godswood with only the stars and waning moon lighting their way. Few know of it and fewer still attend. Bran gives her away, Davos leads them through the ceremony, and the moment Jon has kissed Sansa’s forehead, Maester Wolkan rushes off to the rookery to send a raven to the Citadel to make it official. They have no first kiss, no feast, no bedding ceremony. They don’t even walk to the Lord’s chamber together lest someone uninitiated sees them. Instead Jon waits in a dark corner until a guard has passed and then he slips inside before he can think better of it and run away. 

She’s still dressed, cloak and all. That gray dress with the broad leather belt and the necklace hanging like a weapon from her throat, deterring anyone to touch her. The bed is down-turned, waiting for the lady and her husband to lie down, to lie together in this lie of a marriage where one loves so deeply and the other is offering more than he should ever accept.

He should tell her. Just tell her. _I love you, Sansa._ Such simple words, such a complicated truth she deserves to know. She might not even mind; she might find it easier. This love she hopes for, one built stone by stone, will be so much quicker to build if one already loves, won’t it? It can be the foundation of which she spoke. _I love you,_ his mind says, but his lips remain still because what if it only makes it crumble?

Sansa unhooks her cloak and drapes it over a chair, removes her boots and he toes off his own. Then she peels off her gloves and holds her small hands against the warmth of the hearth. Rubs them together. Flexes her fingers, while he does nothing at all but stare at her. She turns to look over her shoulder, her face bathing in a golden glow that softens the sharp lines of her face and turns her eyes the pale greenish blue of the iced-over sea. And those eyes glide over his body, takes him in from the top of his head to the toes of the boots he didn’t have time to polish. He took a bath, washed his hair, washed _everything_ , and got so lost in thought in that bathtub the water grew cold without his noticing. Not until Sam knocked on the door and told him it was time, and Jon threw on his clothes and rushed outside with his hair loose and damp enough to freeze in the godswood.

“We don’t have to do this,” he says, voice like a shattered rock, all gravelly and broken.

Sansa stills, curls her hands into fists before wrapping her arms around her body. She stares into the flames as if she finds truths therein, as if the Lord of Light speaks to all those kissed by fire.

“As long as this marriage is unconsummated, it can be set aside. And you need an heir. The sooner you put a babe in my belly, the better. Unless… Unless you don’t think you can. With me.”

“No, I uhm… I think I can.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“Do _you_ want to?”

Her jaw tenses up. “I’m the one offering.”

“Aye.” He swallows. “Better get started, then.”

He stretches his mouth in a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and when she turns around to face him he finds her wearing a matching expression and it almost makes him laugh. Almost.

“May I undress you?” she asks, gesturing at him.

Jon gives a nod and watches her hands run along the leather straps of his cloak. Droplets from his thawing hair land on her skin and run down the back of her hands to get soaked up by her sleeves. She removes the cloak and drapes it over hers on that chair. Then she finds the laces of his doublet and loosens each one so that she can remove that as well. His tunic is of thin bone-white linen and tucked into his breeches. She tugs it free. Grabs the hem. Jon closes his eyes and lifts his arms as she pulls off the garment. Then she pauses; he opens his eyes. He can’t see her breathing, but her lips are parted and her eyes locked on his scar. The one running over his heart. Slowly, she touches the puckered line, runs the pads of her fingers over it as if learning its shape, and his skin prickles with pleasure. Sansa lays her hand flat over his scar and her eyes flicker up to his and he knows she can feel it, how his heart is beating so hard, so fast it’ll break out of his ribcage if she keeps touching him.

She licks her lips, bites down on her bottom lip, but it’s not a sensual move meant to entice. There’s something pensive about it, as though she’s biting back concern she’d voice if they weren’t encased in the frailest of bubbles that could burst at the wrong word. But then she blinks and returns her attention to his body, to his scars, learning each one, learning the shape of his torso, of each muscle he can’t help but flex while she gives no indication as to whether she likes what she sees or feels at all.

Her fingers dance down his stomach, run along the waistband of his breeches. His cock twitches. She’ll notice soon, how she affects him. He should think about something else. No. He should accept it, embrace it. It’s what she wants, isn’t it? For them to… Oh, _gods_.

She tugs at the laces of his breeches and Jon’s hand moves on its own, closes around her wrist to stop her.

Sansa’s eyes meet his. “No?”

“Are you sure. Are you _really_ sure this is what you want. We can wait, Sansa.”

She removes her hands, thumb finding palm in her self-soothing way. “You can’t do it, can you. Just tell me the truth.”

_I love you, that’s the truth. I love you and I want you so badly I’m falling apart._

Jon suppresses a groan and takes a deep breath to calm himself. “I can do it. But can you?”

“Yes.” She brings her hands back to his breeches, toying with the laces. “Is this all right?”

He sighs but nods and closes his eyes, because if he has to watch her undress the rest of him, watch her looking at him, exploring him the way she explored his torso, he might just spill in her hands like a green boy. His breeches glide down his thighs and pool at his feet. He steps out of them. Now he wears only socks and smallclothes. He must look ridiculous. Is she watching him? Does she like what she sees or is he just flesh to her, a duty, a chore? Her fingers slip under the fabric, cool against his hip bones. Then they disappear. He hears the jangle of metal chains. The creak of leather. When he opens his eyes, he finds her standing with her back to him. The belt and necklace gone.

“Will you help me?”

It takes him a beat or two to act. His hands that were so steady before now tremble like frail autumn leaves clinging to a naked branch. At least they’re clean. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed while picturing his coarse, dirty hands against her clean, soft skin. He tightens them, nails digging into his palms, and breathes out slowly. When he opens them again they’re steadier. Then he strokes a hand down her back, the tightly drawn laces rippling beneath his fingers. He unlaces them in a gentle pace, in a gentle manner until the back of the bodice opens up. She’s forgone a corset and the shift beneath is the palest shade of peach, sheer enough that he sees her scars through the fabric. Scars from other men beating her, cutting her, whipping her.

Moving on instinct, Jon slides his arms around her waist and rests his forehead against the top of her spine. She smells like rosewater, pink and clean, and she lays her own arms around his to keep him there, to accept his hug, to give him comfort when he’s the one trying to comfort her.

“They’re dead,” she whispers, rocking from side to side. “Joffrey, Meryn Trant, Ramsay, Littlefinger. They don’t matter anymore. I refuse to let them matter. I refuse to let them win.”

She's so strong and beautiful and he smiles into her skin, wants to kiss her, but they’re not making love tonight. They’re consummating a necessity and so he only loosens his hold on her and leaves the reins in her hands.

Sansa slips out of his embrace, slips out of her dress too and hangs it over the other chair in the room. Her hair falls like a copper river over one shoulder, its luster carrying the heat of fire her eyes are lacking.

“I’m going to keep my shift on,” she says, pulling the hemline up to her hip to roll down her stockings and it might be the most erotic thing he’s ever seen. Jon drags a hand over his mouth. Sansa’s eyes flicker up to meet his. He ducks his head. “You can look. You’re my husband.”

Jon shakes his head and turns around.

“It might help.”

“No, I…” He shakes his head again and stares stubbornly at the door while listening to fabric sliding over skin.

“You can pretend I’m someone else, if you need to," she says, voice even and calm. "I understand.”

“Are you going to pretend I’m someone else?”

The sound of sliding fabric stops. “No. Just don’t call me something else. Please.”

“I won’t! I’m not going to--” He eases out a breath to calm himself. “I’m not going to pretend you’re someone else, Sansa.”

Cool fingers traipse over his lower back and he nearly yelps, closes his own warm hands around hers as he spins to face her.

“Sorry.” She smiles faintly. “My hands are always cold.”

“It’s all right.”

“May I touch you?”

Jon stammers out something incoherent until his voice fails him and they stand there, hands entwined and gazes locked and breaths mingling while she waits for his reply. For his consent. For this to be different. He releases her hands and cups her cheeks instead, looking deeply into her eyes.

“You can touch me wherever you want, Sansa. You don’t need to ask.”

“Are you sure? I want…” Her eyes flit between his and, for the space between two breaths, she loses her Lady of Winterfell cool and allows him to see her vulnerable. “I’m ready to do this--I want to do this--but I need to know that you’re sure. I don’t want to force you.”

“You’re not,” Jon says, stroking his thumb up her cheekbone before dropping his hands to his sides. “I knew what this meant too. I entered it willingly.”

Her palm rests against his chest, his heart pounding against it, and then she slides it down his stomach, where she turns her hand so that her fingers points down. Jon’s mind is louder even than his heart, shouting a million thoughts at once about what she means to do and what it means and then it all goes quiet when she cups him. All he knows is Sansa fondling him with curious fingers, coaxing his already half-hard cock to grow. He drops his head to rest his forehead on her shoulder and bites back a filthy curse. But when she slips her hand into his smallclothes and her skin touches his, he can hold it back no more and groans a _fuck_ into her shoulder. Her nails graze his sack, run over that wrinkled skin over and over, and his shuddering breaths wash over her skin until it goes damp. Then her fingers close around his cock and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He wants to grip her hips and pull her flush to him. He wants to touch her everywhere. But she’s yet to invite his touch so he clenches his hands while she keeps exploring the length of him, the head, even giving a few shy pumps with her hand that leaves him fully hard and panting.

Then her hand is gone. She’s gone. Dropped down, hands pulling his smallclothes down too and Jon holds his breath because _surely_ she’s not-- Her warm mouth closing around him would end him.

But she doesn’t--and he sags from both relief and disappointment, and flutters his eyes open to see her standing again, slipping out of her own smallclothes, that peach shift draped around her like the delicate wings of a butterfly.

“Shall we lie down?” she says, glancing at his cock and he has to tamper down the urge to cover himself.

Everything about this is odd--and oddly enticing. He’s ashamed, aroused, confused, _aroused_ , in love. He lies down on his back and closes his eyes. It’s easier. Relaxing, letting it all happen, doing whatever she wants him to do. The mattress shifts beneath him. Cool hair brushes over his chest. Warm thighs move against his, trap him between them even though he’ll never run away. Not anymore. Not until she tells him to. Then those cold fingers return to his cock. She’s lining him up already, prepared to take him in even though her body can’t be ready at all. Jon’s eyes fly open, brow knitted with concern. There’s still no heat in her eyes, no tremble in her breathing, no flush on her cheeks, and he feels himself softening in her hand.

She lets out a little _oh_ and then the flush comes, not the beautiful pink of arousal but the deep burning red of shame. She even bows her head, lets her hair fall as a shimmering copper veil to hide her crimson cheeks.

“You don’t want me,” she whispers.

“No, that’s not-- You’re not aroused, are you?”

“What does that matter?”

“It matters to me. It should matter to you.” Jon tries sitting up and Sansa rolls off him, sits next to him with her legs tucked under her body and her hair and arms shielding her barely dressed body. “I don’t want to hurt you, Sansa. If we just…” He gestures awkwardly. “It will hurt.”

“It always hurts. You can’t change that.”

“I want to try. It can feel good. I promise.”

“Not for women.”

“Yes, for women. If the man takes his time with her, makes her, uh…”

She peers out from under her curtain of hair. “What?”

“Slick. Wet. Aroused. Then it doesn’t hurt or it shouldn’t, at least. I think. I could… I could make it good for you. I _want_ to make it good for you.”

“How?”

“I’d touch you, the way you touched me. And I’d kiss you. Everywhere. If you’d let me.”

“Everywhere? I've heard about...” She looks down her body, lashes dark against her cheeks. "Even there?"

“Aye. Especially there.” Smiling, Jon takes her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “You’d like it. I hope. If you let me. Or you could touch yourself, if that--”

“No. Ladies don’t… do _that_.” Lying down now, Sansa tugs up her shift to drape over her thighs. “You do it. I trust you.”

Her eyes drift closed, her chest rises and falls calmly, and her arms lie relaxed by her sides. She’s waiting and he wants to kiss her, wants to wake her with that kiss, wake her from this slumber life has forced her into where hunger never is allowed, but if she wanted her lips to his she would’ve kissed him already. So Jon lowers himself over her and nuzzles her neck, trails his lips over her skin while breathing in that warm rosy scent of her. A light nip at her pulse points earns him a shiver and he gives her a few more before dropping kisses along her collarbone until he reaches the dip beneath her throat. There the v-shaped neckline of her shift leads him down to the valley between her breasts. A quick glance on her face: her eyes are still closed, but her lips are now slightly parted and wet, as though she’s licked them. Jon grows braver, bolder. He longs to nudge the fabric aside and take a nipple into his mouth, but she wanted the shift on and instead he kisses his way to that peak and sucks at it through the shift.

A small noise escapes Sansa; her fingers ghost his hair before the hand returns to the mattress. He gives another suck, a flick of his tongue, and she lets out a trembling breath and he treats her other breast too while his fingers stroke down the side of her stomach, to her hip, to slip underneath the fabric and find her warm mound. He cups her, rests his hand there while he keeps lavishing her nipples with his tongue until the fabric is soaked and Sansa is pushing ever-so-slightly into his palm. Gingerly, he pushes back and feels her thighs opening, just a touch, feels her hips lifting, just a touch. She’s ready for more, he realizes with a thrill that surges through his body; she’s ready for his mouth.

Jon licks his lips and moves down her body, tugs the hem of her shift up to her waist and positions himself between her thighs. His heart is beating the most wonderful rhythm against his ribcage. He’s going to kiss her right there. She wants him to, allows him to, is waiting for him to, already swollen and pink and glistening, and he dips his head down and breathes in deeply of that heady scent he’s dreamed of for moons and moons. He opens his mouth, extends his tongue. She’s delicious and hot and the high-pitched surprised noise that flows out of her and turns into a needy whimper when he licks her again is the sweetest sound he’s ever heard. He licks her again and again just to hear more of that noise, but she remains stubbornly silent. He wraps his lips around her clit and sucks and _still_ she’s silent, but she can’t hide how her breathing trembles, how her skin is flushed, and even though her eyes are closed, he knows without a doubt that would she open them, he’d find heat in there. Heat and that hunger.

He works her bud, tongue quick and firm, mouth sucking, while teasing her opening with his finger until she’s slick with his spit and her own juices. Then he releases her with a pop and Sansa rolls her hips, invites his mouth to return, but he wants to see her when he slips a finger inside her. He goes slow at first, but she gasps out a gorgeous moan and spreads her legs farther and lets him slide in to his knuckle and he lowers his mouth again and shoulders one of her legs to rest over his back. Sansa adjusts her position instantly, helping him get better access, and he sucks and licks at her clit while pumping his finger in her cunt, wet noises filling the quiet chamber. Now her breathing is fast, her hips rocking, and the linen strains beneath him as she fists the sheets. She’s clenching around him too, a jolt every so often accompanied by a hitch in her breathing, and each time he grows harder and harder until he must rub himself against the mattress for relief.

She’s close now, so so close. Right on the precipice. Just one more hard lick and she’ll fall.

Jon’s finger slides out of her and he lifts his head and she lifts her hips with a whimper to chase his mouth and he can’t help but grin. _Gods_ , she’s gorgeous, all wet and swollen and needing him and he’s ready, so hard he knows he won’t last long.

He climbs up her body and, propped up on his hands, looks down at her with a gentle smile she doesn’t open her eyes to see. “Are you ready?”

_(Are you ready, my love?)_

Sansa nods and lays her hands on his shoulders. He slides his fingers between her folds and spreads her wetness over his cock before nudging at her opening and he’s shaking again, his arms like the thrumming string of a bow. It’s too much. Can he do this? Can he fuck her out of duty when all he wants is to love her? He just supped on her cunt until he was hard and now he falters. What if he hurts her? What if she hates it, hates him--how can he live with that?

Sansa opens her eyes. Smiles. A warm smile, a permission, an encouragement. Jon drowns in her eyes and feels himself sink deeper and deeper until he gets lost in the feeling of everything warm and wet and tight. His stomach is hot and cold and surging and calm, his head light and his blood pumping so fiercely he can hear it pulsing through his veins. Gods, he loves her. Her mouth is pink and inviting, but she’s not agreed to a kiss and he’s not sure he could kiss her without revealing just how much he loves this, loves her, and he slants his mouth over her neck instead, sucks at her skin as he starts to move. She emits a little burst of breath each time he thrusts into her and soon she finds his rhythm, moves her body with his, even lifts a leg to wrap around him, and he sinks deeper still and it’s _so good_ , better than anything, and he loves her, _gods_ he loves her, with each thrust he loves her even more and--

“I love you.”

Jon freezes. _Oh, seven hells_. It just slipped out of him. Now she’ll throw him off her, repulsed and _hating_ him and--

“Don’t stop,” she breathes into his ear, heel digging into his bum, fingers digging into his back, urging him to move. “Please don’t stop.”

Jon pulls back and pushes back in and she rewards him with a breathy _yes_ and he finds their rhythm again and her hand finds its way between their bodies to do what ladies’ hands do not and Jon is _throbbing_ , his whole body on fire and tingling, those tiny moans she’s emitting intoxicating. He kisses her throat, her jawline; she nestles her hand in his hair, the other scratching his back and the pressure deep in his belly grows tight and intense. Then Sansa tenses up beneath him, her walls clenching around his cock, massaging the length of him, and when a strangled moan flows from her lips, she pulls him with her and he explodes inside the pink, wet warmth of her, collapses atop her boneless body, sated and sweaty and equally boneless.

Arms wrapped around his back, leg still slung over his waist, Sansa’s cradling him and it’s not a necessity at all, nor a duty or a chore. Perhaps it’s not love either, but it’s a good start, a solid foundation. If this part works--and it _really_ worked--perhaps everything else will follow.

He’s loathe to leave her embrace, but he must leave while he still can. With a deep exhale and one last kiss to her jawline, Jon rolls off her and lies down on his back, one arm folded behind his head.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

He turns his head to look at her; she’s lying on her side, head propped up on one hand, watching him with wide eyes.

“Did it hurt?”

“No. It didn’t hurt at all.”

“Good.” He nods slowly and stares back at the ceiling. “I should go back to my own chamber.”

Sansa puts her hand on his arm. “Stay. You’re my husband. This is where you belong.”

“I can’t sleep here until everyone knows.”

“Then stay for a little while. Please? For me.”

“You want me to?”

“I do. And… As soon as you’re ready, we should try again. If you want to.”

Jon’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “What?”

“You need an heir. We should lie together as often as we can. It takes more than once, Jon.”

“You want to go _again_?”

“Only if you want to. If you don’t, I can take a no. I’m not a child.”

“Yeah, I uh…” He squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. “I need to clean myself up first.”

Once they’re both clean and dry and back in bed, she indicates his feet with a nod. “Do you always wear your socks when you…?”

“No.” He laughs and cards a hand through his hair. “This is my first.”

“At least that makes me your first something.”

“Aye, my first time with socks on.” He caresses her cheek. “And my first time as a married man.”

That lures a smile from her lips, one that reaches her eyes, and she inches a bit closer, as though she wants a cuddle, and warmth spreads throughout Jon’s body. This is how it’ll be then, he thinks, fucking and murmuring silly things to one another afterwards and cuddling until they both grow sleepy. He could get used to that. But she doesn’t cuddle close. She stops before their bodies touch and her smile slips from her lips and gives way for a look he can’t read and he knows before she even opens her mouth what will spill out of it.

That warmth evaporates and leaves him colder than winter air.

“Jon? That thing you said, did you mean it?”

“What thing?”

“Don’t do that.”

Jon heaves a sigh. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

“The truth.”

“And what if the truth makes you unhappy?”

“Only lies make me unhappy.”

He nods slowly, heart galloping in his chest. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Just tell me the truth. I’m your wife. I deserve to know.”

“You’re my… Aye, you are, aren’t you? Consummated and all.” With a groan, he presses his thumb to a bright pain in his forehead. “The truth won’t make you happy, Sansa.”

“So you were thinking of someone else?” She waits for a reply he doesn’t give. “Tell me,” she says, voice sharper than Valyrian steel.

“Aye, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you the truth. I fell in love with you at Castle Black, is that what you want to hear? Will that make you happy, Sansa? Will it make you happy to know that the day I kissed your forehead, I almost kissed your mouth too and I knew I’d never love anyone like I love you. Never. Will that make you happy? To know I fell for you long before I should’ve, that I’ve carried around these perverted dreams for a year and that you just gave me everything I’ve always wanted. Are you happy now?”

He shoots her a glare. She’s watching him with round, glossy eyes, shaky breaths leaving her trembling lips and tear slips down her cheek and _damn it all to the seven hells_.

“I’m sorry, Sansa. I shouldn’t have--”

Her lips crashes into his, hot and hungry and wild, and she’s scrambling atop his body and he’s so stunned he doesn’t think to reciprocate before she releases his lips. “I didn’t think you loved me back,” she murmurs, brushing her fingers through his beard.

“Back?” he asks and she smiles against his lips before kissing him sweetly, but he places his hands on her shoulders and pushes her up a bit to see her eyes. He needs to see her eyes. “You love me?”

“I told you. I told you before we married. What did you think I meant?”

“That you loved me as a brother.”

“Gods, you’re dumb,” she whispers and kisses him again and her hands are in his hair and his move to her body and soon he grows hard again and she helps him push inside her and he helps her move by grabbing her hips and when they peak they swallow each other’s moans.

Afterwards, when they float in that hazy golden bliss together, she stays atop him, head pillowed on his chest and he lets her, would let her lie there all night if she asked. Won't leave her bed unless she tells him to leave it. Not that he thinks she will. She's sighing happily and drawing lazy circles on his skin. They’re warm now, her fingers, and as he laces them with his that song which plagued him comes back to him, “‘ _For hands of gold are always cold, but a woman's hands are warm.’”_

“That’s lovely. Did you make that up?”

Jon laughs. “No. Arya sang it at the welcoming feast and it got stuck in my head. ‘ _For she was his secret treasure, she was his shame and his bliss,”_ he sings. “Fits rather well, I reckon.”

“I’m your secret treasure?”

“Aye, and my bliss. But not my shame. Not anymore.” He drops a kiss to Sansa’s hair and holds her tightly against his chest. “Now you’re my wife.”

“And you’re my husband. Who wears his socks when he beds me.”

Jon looks down at his feet and finds them draped in black socks mended by his wife's hands and he can’t help but laugh. She shakes her head and smiles so fondly at him it only makes him laugh more because _this_ is how it’ll be. They’ll make love and murmur silly things in bed and laugh and cuddle until they grow sleepy. Wars may come and so may troubles, but from this day until their last day, they’ll be each other's bliss. From this day until their last day, they'll be happy.

 

_The end_


End file.
